The roles of brand community and community engagement in building brand trust on social media

•Models how consumers’ relationships with four elements of a brand community based on social media influence brand trust.•Three of the four relationships positively influence brand trust.•Customer-other customers’ relationships negatively influence brand trust, which is counter intuitive.•Engagement...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computers in human behavior 2014-08, Vol.37, p.152-161
Main Authors: Habibi, Mohammad Reza, Laroche, Michel, Richard, Marie-Odile
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Brand community
Brand trust
Buildings
Communities
Community engagement
Community relations
Construction
Consumer centric model
Consumers
Digital media
Facebook
Human behavior
Social media
Social networks
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:•Models how consumers’ relationships with four elements of a brand community based on social media influence brand trust.•Three of the four relationships positively influence brand trust.•Customer-other customers’ relationships negatively influence brand trust, which is counter intuitive.•Engagement amplifies the strength of relationships consumers have with element of brand community.•Engagement has moderating effect in translating the effect of such relationships on brand trust. Brand communities and social media often overlap. Social media is an ideal environment for building brand communities. However, there is limited research about the benefits and consequences of brand communities established on social media platforms. This study addresses this issue by developing a model depicting how consumers’ relationship with the elements of a brand community based on social media (i.e. brand, product, company, and other consumers) influence brand trust. The findings include that three of the four relationships positively influence brand trust. However, customer-other customers’ relationships negatively influence brand trust, which is counter intuitive and interesting. The prominent role of engagement in a brand community is also investigated in the model. Community engagement amplifies the strength of the relationships consumers make with the elements of brand community and it has a moderating effect in translating the effects of such relationships on brand trust. Finally, theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.
ISSN:0747-5632
1873-7692
DOI:10.1016/j.chb.2014.04.016